Spring is in the air! Bring out the road bikes.

We have had some pretty nice days here lately and I've been sneaking in a few road ride here and there. Yesterday was Anthony and I second attempt at a route in Bristol VA. Last week we scouted out the route but had to cut it short due to lack of sun light. Anthony found this route listed on a website called Route Slip where if you own a fancy GPS device you can upload your rides or search for rides that people have done and download them to your GPS unit. I'm not this fancy but apparently Anthony is so we've been riding this route uploaded by a guy named "Willis". We've been having a little fun with Willis, occasionally I'll ask Anthony "Where is Willis"? He'll reply "We're kickin' his arse". Once you have the route downloaded to your GPS it comes with that person's ride times as well so you can ride against their time. Even with a couple of wrong turns and stops to take all these interesting pics, we left Willis in the dust. Yesterday we got started a little earlier and managed to finish the entire route which is only 26 miles but with a minor mech. on my bike and a few wrong turns we made it back to our cars just in time. We started at Mountain Sports Ltd. in Bristol and headed out to the more rural areas of the city. In our last attempt we saw a few interesting sights along the way but we missed a few due to our shortcut last time. I brought along my camera this time to get a few pics but I had no idea there was so much interesting stuff out there to see.

Check out this chimney, we actually saw this one last time but we had a dog in tow so we flew past it before I had a chance to get the camera out. They sure are taking their sweet time building the house to go with it. Vines have already sprouted up around it. They had better get a move on it.

This mailbox just screams FAST!

Now I know a few people who actually decorate for Easter (my mother-in-law) but they do it tastefully. I thought Easter decorations were for Easter eggs? These people should be in the Guinness Book of World Records. I wonder if they have an Easter decorating section? There was more to see but the people were in the yard so I just did a rolling shot. Click pic to make bigger.

We saw this right off the side of the road near the end of our ride and we were like "What the heck is that?" I snapped a few pics because I work with a few guys from the Bristol area and one guy imparticular seems to know everything. After showing him the photos he knew exactly what it was. It is the old Bristol Water Treatment Plant. It's not been used since the 1950's. I had a feeling it had something to do with water and there was a small stream running next to it.

I think I'm going to make Bristol a regular for some of my road outings. I wonder what else Willis has in store for us?

Have a good one.